Of Jewels and Other Things
by Layla Reyne
Summary: Elena's moment of transition followed by a graveside heart to heart between Damon and Elena, in which he gives her a meaningful daylight talisman. One-shot.


Of Jewels and Other Things

By: Layla Reyne

Notes: Spoilers for 3X22 – The Departed.

**Disclaimer: The characters and other things from The Vampire Diaries are not mine. All due credit to the rightful holders.**

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Elena drank and then she ran.

Ran from the look of desperation on Jeremy's face. He had pleaded with her to transition, because if she didn't, he would be alone with absolutely no family left in this world.

Ran from the look of resignation on Bonnie's face. In the past twenty-four hours, she had combed through every spell book at her house, the boarding house and the witches' mansion. Bonnie had exhausted herself and her line to the spirits in making every effort to stop Elena's transition.

Ran from the look of concern on Caroline's face. She had spent the better part of the day searching the catacombs beneath the Lockwood property for Tyler's body. Caroline was sure that he had perished after Klaus was staked, but when she couldn't find his body, she had kicked her nervous energy into smothering mode and tried (unsuccessfully) to hide the fact that a small part of her secretly delighted at having a sister for all of eternity.

Ran from the overwhelming look of guilt on Stefan's face. He had respected her choice and saved Matt, letting her die without knowing it would only be temporary. Stefan had stayed by her side, making the pros and cons list for transition, taking care of her, and all the while carefully avoiding any mention of his own desires for her (their) future. He wanted her to make this final choice for herself, like always.

Ran from the absence of Damon's face. All of his fire and anger at Stefan and Meredith had faded, replaced by the internal conflict that caused him to beg her to drink from the crystal tumbler of blood he offered and led him to the witches' mansion with Bonnie to beg for the spirits' assistance in keeping her human. They had thrown every one of their tricks at him, and he had taken it all, even offered himself as a sacrifice to balance the forces of nature. In the end, the witches judged that the ideal balance was the extinction of the living Petrova bloodline, preventing any more doppelgangers, and Damon, conflicted by his hope and hopelessness, had vanished.

Elena drank and then saw the reflection of a monster in the mirror with lines around its eyes, fangs protruding from its gums and blood on its lips. Katherine, but not. She took one last look at the faces surrounding her, felt her chest constrict for the one that was absent, and then she ran.

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Elena wasn't sure how long she had been sitting at her family's plot in the cemetery, staring blankly at her parents' gravestone. The sobbing stopped some time ago. Now she was just numb, with a dull ache (for blood) in her throat and stomach and the knowledge that with each minute of the early morning she continued to sit here – each minute that the sky grew a shade lighter – she would have to return and face this new version of her reality, unsure of whether she could (wanted to) survive the eternity ahead.

The morning fog was growing dense around her, and when a black crow perched itself on her parents' gravestone and cawed, startling her from her thoughts, a ghost of a smile flitted across her face.

"You were here that day," she stated matter of factly, without turning around, hearing him approach behind her.

"Was testing my 'even a little danger' theory," Damon replied, and Elena could hear the smirk in his voice as he came closer.

"How many times, Damon?" She turned to look up at him, serious but without accusation, just needing to confirm that all the blanks in her memory were completely filled in.

"Just the two," he answered, all trace of his smirk gone and willing her to believe him. Elena nodded and turned her focus back to the Gilbert gravestone and the horizon beyond.

Those lost memories had been fuzzy at first – feelings without the pictures and words to help them make sense – excitement and intrigue as to the one, awe with a twinge of loneliness as to the other. Then, after they had arrived back at the boarding house from the hospital, Stefan handed her a glass of bourbon to help calm her increasingly agitated nerves and, with her first swallow of the fiery sweet liquid, the memories came back with startling clarity, causing her to drop the glass and sink to her knees in front of the fireplace. When the picture show in her head finally reached its conclusion, she had looked up for Damon, anguish at the knowledge and opportunities he had deprived her of, but the place on the couch where he sat not thirty seconds ago was empty. Elena had heard him upstairs in his room, knocking the candles from his dresser, kicking over piles of books and smashing his own glass of bourbon into his fireplace.

"I brought you something." The nearness of Damon's voice directly behind her snapped her out of the memory. Elena started to turn toward him, but as his arms stretched around in front of her, she looked down at the necklace he was securing around her neck – Isobel's amulet. "Had to get this on you before the sun comes up. Bonnie respelled it for you." Damon clasped the necklace in place and lifted the rest of her hair out from under the chain. His hands came to rest on her shoulders, and she was too tired to fight it anymore, allowing herself to sink back into his waiting arms as she handled the blue jewel that now hung around her neck.

"I'm sorry," Elena whispered.

"Elena, shh, we don't have to get into this right now." His arms tightened around her, rocking her gently.

"No, Damon, let me get this out."

"Sheesh, someone's a pushy baby vampire. Go ahead, out with it, purge." He playfully mocked her, stretching his arms out wide in front of her. Elena used her new found strength and speed to grab his wrists and pull his arms back around her, facing away from him still. She knew the words she needed to say would get stuck in her throat the minute she looked into his impossibly blue eyes.

"I told you I couldn't lose anyone else; that I'd lost too much already. And if I chose you, I knew Stefan would leave, maybe go on a ripper bender, and I couldn't take that risk, for all our sakes. You promised you'd never leave me again, and no matter what deal you made with Stefan, I knew you'd keep your word to me. You waited 145 years for Katherine, and I was counting on you to do the same for me. I did what I had to do to keep both of you in my life. I didn't have the heart or the strength to do what you did for me. I was selfish with you." The last sentence was barely a whisper, as she choked back tears, a few still escaping down her cheeks.

Damon turned her around in his arms, and gently wiped the tears from her face. "Elena, for every one of my unselfish acts, I've committed at least ten that were equally selfish. Neither one of us is a saint here."

"I love you both," she confessed, unable to meet his eyes.

"I know," he said gently, reminding her of that night on her porch when she told him he couldn't kiss her again. "Very Katherine of you." Elena's eyes darted up to his, but there was no hurt behind his eyes or ill will directed at her. It was just the simple truth. He held up his hands in surrender. "Damon, not helping," he parroted her voice back to her, trying to diffuse the tension.

"No, Damon, you're right. After I drank that first glass of blood, I looked in the mirror and all I could see was her."

"Elena," Damon began firmly, his hands now framing her face, "that is where the similarities end. Well, that and the whole looking exactly alike thing" he teased, gently tucking a few strands of her hair behind her ear. "You are so much more than Katherine and I will spend the rest of eternity making sure you understand that, no matter who you love."

"Promise?" She brought one of her hands up to his cheek, grazing against the rough stubble that he'd let grow the past couple of days.

"Promise," he answered, cupping her hand with this own, and then turning her back around and pulling her snugly into his arms to watch the sunrise.

"We're going to need a safe word, you know," Damon said.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, despite my couple of lapses, if I stopped long enough to listen, I could tell you two apart by your differing heartbeats. Now," he exaggerated for effect, "curly hair versus straight hair is not going to cut it."

"Thank you for stating the obvious," Elena replied with a smile. She paused for a moment, thinking, "Denver."

"All right, 'Denver', it is", Damon chuckled, and Elena could hear the satisfaction underlying his laugh, as he set his chin on her shoulder. His warm breath caused Elena to turn her face toward him slightly, and he met her cheek with a soft kiss. "We'll survive this. We always survive. Trust me."

As the first rays of sun warmed her skin, Elena closed her eyes and sank further back into Damon's arms, letting the warmth of the sun, his slow even breathing at her ear and the rise and fall of his chest lull her to the edge of sleep. With one hand clutched around her mother's jewel and the other wrapped in Damon's hands, Elena thought, for the first time, that maybe she could (wanted to) survive this.

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_**Thanks for reading. Reviews are much appreciated.**_


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